A bit of a trip on the way back machine to 67 (68?) when I was at New Mexico State University.

My girlfriend was a reporter on the campus newspaper and went to interview Peter, Paul, and Mary after their concert. She froze up and turned into a babbling idiot when faced with their 'star power'. I took the microphone from her and conducted the interview. They were just sweet folks and understood the situation completely and they basically took over and ensured it was a smooth, successful and very printable interview.

I was just watching (again) Martin Scorsese's documentary film about Bob Dylan called No Direction Home. There's a segment in there where a couple people comment about how Peter, Paul and Mary were one of the early groups who were really manufactured by their manager (Albert Grossman.) He had Paul change his stage name to Paul from Noel because he wanted the group's name to sound like a biblical reference.

Someone else talks about how Mary had been in Florida for a few weeks or months, maybe in '62 or '63, and then she returned to Greenwich Village. It was February and cold in New York, so they were jealous of her for having been in Florida. But when they asked her why she didn't have a tan, she said she had been told by Grossman not to go outside because he wanted her to be the pale blonde one in the the group. A guy in the film says it made his skin crawl to realize how much Peter, Paul and Mary were being manipulated by their manager.

All this was around the time they had huge hits with their cover versions of Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."